BILLBOARDS GO AFTER MARIJUANA GROWERS

During Harvest Time, 6 Ads Encourage Peopleto Report Illegal Plants

By AILEEN SOPER GASTONIA -- August, best known for hot weather and
back-to-school shopping, is also prime time for marijuana production, when
the plants are reaching their peak height.

The Gaston County Law Enforcement Association is putting up billboards
across the county this month encouraging residents to rat out those growing
the illegal drug.

The six signs, which show a crossed-out marijuana leaf, display the
telephone number of Gaston County Crime Stoppers. They'll stay up through
mid-September - harvest time to marijuana growers and vice cops. Gaston
County Police used the billboards for the first time last year. Authorities
credit them with dramatically increasing the number of tips and plants seized.

The agency's vice narcotics squad seized 114 plants last year, up from 47
in 1999.

W.B. Hall, a Gaston County Police vice agent, said the increased number of
tips allowed trained police spotters to identify marijuana plants while
flying 1,000 feet overhead in surveillance airplanes and helicopters.

The billboard idea started when Gaston County Police noticed they were
getting fewer tips on possible sites of marijuana production. Police have
also run ads similar to the billboards on Channel 16, the county's
public-access cable station, and in local newspapers.

Tipsters have included jilted spouses and upset neighbors. Some growers
have confided in their preachers, and the preachers called police.

From the air, police have spotted the plants sprouting in wooded patches,
roadsides and backyard gardens.

"It's countywide," said Hall, the marijuana eradication coordinator for a
team of investigators from Gaston County's police departments.

"We've found some in Crowders Mountain, in Cherryville, Stanley and up near
Lucia."

Marijuana plants can reach 6 to 15 feet in height. Police spotters flying
overhead have been trained to identify even single plants on the ground.

Earlier this year, a crew returning to a local airport noticed a marijuana
stash near Hickory Creek in south Gastonia.

"It was a full-sized, professional operation," Hall said. "This is why we fly."

Police seized 112 plants with an estimated street value of $280,000. The
planters, who remain at large, took care to hide their booty before the
police found it, Hall said.

They clear-cut a patch of land, surrounded it in chicken wire and piled
brush into a 6-foot wall so the marijuana plants on the interior would be
invisible to anyone walking by. They even painted three 5-gallon buckets in
camouflage. Police found the buckets filled with water and Miracle-Gro.

In another bust, police found 17 marijuana plants growing in a kudzu patch
along a highway in Bessemer City.

Still, with all the growing, Hall estimates that just 10percent of the
marijuana smoked in Gaston is actually grown here. Most, he said, comes
from Mexico.

Know someone who's growing marijuana? Call Crime Stoppers at (704) 861-8000.